performance report

Performance report

For my performance report I attended “Shakespeare in song” at UTD at 8:00 pm. When I walked into the building a guy handed me a program and when I took my seat I began to look at it and it basically gave me the run down of all the songs that were going to be performed at the concert as well as a little background history behind the song so that you can try to familiarize yourself with the song.

As I started to look up I saw that people were starting to file in because I did get there a little early. In the audience I noticed that probably half of the seats were taken, some were students who also were taking notes so I assumed that they were also amateurs when it came to opera and the other were parents who seemed to just watch for fun. To me the audience seemed inexperienced with this kind of type of performance because the conductor, after a couple of songs, would have to face the audience and wave her hands toward her performers to let the audience know that they were allowed to applaud. The audience mostly seemed laid back and not really engaged in the performance other than when they were instructed to clap. The audience did seem a little lazy and not that into to the performance. Yet again most of the people there were students with notebooks and were probably there to complete an assignment so the weren’t really concentrating on the story of the performance but rather the elements that go along with performance.

Before the performance began I noticed that there were two people that walked in from the audience entrance I knew they looked out of place because they were dressed in costumes that looked like they were from the medieval times and they just casually walked in and sat in the front of the auditorium. As the performers began to walk into the Johnson performance hall I noticed that they were all wearing extravagant costumes that was relevant to the era, they seemed well rehearsed which I thought it was because this was their third performance of the weekend so they probably fixed up all the glitches from their last performance to make it perfect. Since the performance consisted of monologues I noticed that when a performer was performing a monologue that the other performers were just standing still as if they were not there, probably to make the monologue look more realistic.

During the actually performance I noticed that there were different tempos going on during different songs. It seemed to me that the faster tempo songs were very happy songs and that the slower tempo songs were more dark and gloomy. The concert consisted of monologues within characters that also sang fast and slow tempo and after the person was done the conductor would again turn towards the audience in order to instruct us to applaud.

For the time and space of the performance the seating was very close to the performers so we were able to watch the performers carefully and pretty much be able to detail there every move. Since we were so close the conductor was able to communicate with the audience very clearly so that the audience wouldn’t get confused. Since we were so close to the performers we didn’t have to go overboard with the clapping and cheering because we were so close so everybody basically gave a nice polite applause each time the conductor instructed us to.

Throughout “Shakespeare in song” the four elements, music, audience, performers, and time and space played a major role of shaping the concert. All four are required in the performance because they show and describe how the performance is regulated.